


Child Within My Heart (Rise Above)

by isaac richard (isaacrichard)



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: ... as happy as this show gets, Abusive Relationships, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Gen, Love, Memories, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:47:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25016467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isaacrichard/pseuds/isaac%20richard
Summary: A series of occurrences that happen between Elliot's eighth birthday and his last year of high school.Mr. Robot tries his best to get them out alive.
Relationships: Darlene Alderson & Elliot Alderson, Edward Alderson/Magda Alderson, Elliot Alderson & Mr. Robot
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	Child Within My Heart (Rise Above)

**Author's Note:**

> title is a reference to landslide by fleetwood mac. 
> 
> also, like, i didn't actually write edward hurting him like im not evil, but it's there, exposed. sit this one out if you feel the need. no sense working yourself up over a fanfic, honestly
> 
> EDIT: THE WAY I DIDN'T EVEN TAG CHARACTER DEATH LMAO FUCK A BITCH NAMED EDWARD ALDERSON

His first memory is of Edward. And that’ll make him sick, years and years later, hunched over the toilet and trying – praying, pleading with God, Allah, whoever will listen – to forget. He doesn’t, and he can’t. Can’t untangle the string without undoing the blanket.

But for now, it’s just pure young toddler enjoyment of colors and shapes, and the fingers on Daddy’s hand. Edward loved him, once. Magda did, too.

They don’t understand, yet, that the house will grow small as another child joins the family, that Edward will be spread too thin after Evil Corp fucks him over. They don’t understand that tensions will rise, things will get worse. Edward will hurt him, and then Edward will leave him.

They don’t know, they can’t know. Life doesn’t work that way, as Krista will tell him. There is no undo button for life – there is no backspace, delete, or dumping into the trashcan.

_Things simply happen_ , she will say, _and we’re left to sweep through the wreckage; start anew with the pieces we find. No one said it was going to be easy, Elliot, but you’re stronger than you know._

Mr. Robot tries to tell him – and he wishes he could listen. He wishes his brain would receive that information from his ears, and he would believe it.

“Elliot,” he says, and Elliot thinks that, six months ago, he would have never imagined being soothed by the bum across from him on the subway. “It wasn’t your fault. Or mine. It was his.”

“He loved me,” Elliot blubbers, and it’s the same old excuse. “He was my friend. It must have been me – I did something _wrong_.”

“You did nothing wrong. He was a monster,” Mr. Robot murmurs, and the way Elliot’s face shatters steps on his heart.

Darlene tries to tell him – in her way. Once she understands because, of course, he can’t keep it from her.

“I’m sorry,” he’ll say, and she’ll laugh. Bitter, angry, but still finding the sick humor in it all. It reminds him of Mr. Robot.

“For our father being a perverted shithead?"

“He was supposed to be the good parent. The better one,” Elliot says, and he lets that hang in the air. It was the truth. “I’m sorry he wasn’t.”

“Yeah, well,” Darlene says, and she pulls him into a hug. She smells like cigarettes and cheap perfume, and love. “They’re both dead now. And we're still alive. That sounds like winning to me." 

Elliot laughs. It's broken, quiet, but it's real. 

And Edward Alderson –

Elliot tries to forget. He puts real, genuine effort into being ignorant again. But every man on the street has his face, and Elliot’s levee breaks. His screws go even looser. He thinks about killing himself, again – because, technically, that frees him of the endless loop. It releases his pain, once and for all.

But what of Darlene? What of Mr. Robot, who would die along with him?

He knows he can’t. Even as he passes the dealers on the street, the ones who know him from times gone by, the ones he’d fixed computers and smartphones for. Shayla’s people, Vera’s people. A life from long ago – the beginning of the year might as well been the beginning of the century. He could; because he knows they would still sell to him. But he can’t.

He must begin again, and that means the truth. The disgusting, messy truth that he hides from – even now, he cowers from what had happened.

Even though he knows better – that the truth will set you free. Freer. More than before, he hopes.

More than feeling trapped in his own head; confused, amnesiac. Answers, he reminds himself, are the beginnings of solutions – and he would die if he didn’t start _trying_ to solve. There would be nothing left to live for.

“Be careful,” Robot tells him, and for once, the warning is genuine. He stubs his cigarette in the ashtray, gray smoke veiling his eyes through his glasses. “It's pretty goddamn nauseating."

Elliot steels his face, pretending that warning didn't deflate his courage. “Don’t let me get lost in there.”

The look Mr. Robot gives him is deadly, deadly serious. “I would always bring you back out, son.”

The cancer diagnosis puts them on pause, he remembers – but his mother seemed to think it would solve itself, and the issue is swept under the rug by his father’s dismissal from Evil Corp, as they seemed to think a man with cancer should die in poverty. The money quickly becomes a much more pressing issue, and the opening of the Mr. Robot store weighs heavy on Magda and Edward’s shoulders.

But Elliot – freshly eight from that passed September – has no clue. He just knows Dad has started to cry in the evenings, away from them all, where he thinks he’s alone. But Elliot is quiet, and more observant than anyone ever gives an eight-year-old credit for being (he’s a lot smarter, too).

“Dad?”

Edward looks up, up to his ears in hospital bills that he quickly crams into a stuffed manila folder. His chunky computer hums, blue light reflected in the oak of the desk.

He clears his throat of a lingering cough. “Hey, kiddo.”

“You were crying,” Elliot notes, his speech blunt in his age. “What’s wrong?”

“Grown-up stuff,” Edward says, softly. Elliot had never liked the way his father looked at him, as he got older, but it had never been this bad. He doesn’t know how to make it stop, though, so he simply squirms in place, regretting asking what was wrong.

“You look good, Elliot,” his father says. “Growing into a handsome young man.”

And in the back of his mind, that sends off a warning bell. But the praise – that he so rarely is afforded by his mother – is enough to wash away his worries.

“Thanks,” he says, and his tone is pitched.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Edward says, rubbing his forehead. He looks much older than Elliot remembers. “Go play, now.”

“That was the start,” he tells Krista. He feels a knot in his stomach and sweat on his forehead, like he’s getting ready to vomit. “I should have told my mom right there.”

“No should haves,” Krista reminds him. “There’s no going back, and you were a child. Remember that.”

When Edward dies, no one has the time to mourn. His car is quickly sold, and so is the house, and they cram together in a two bedroom in a much poorer part of Jersey. A lot more people look like them.

Magda works nights, folding laundry for a hotel, and she shares her master bedroom with Darlene. Darlene, who often ends up in Elliot’s bed anyway, even though she was going on fourteen. He understood. He has the fading cigarette burns, circular and gray, dotting his forearms – same as her.

Elliot had stopped knowing his mother by this time. She becomes a cold, distant woman who smoked in front of loud, vapid soap operas all day, drinking cheap cocktails, eating the food Elliot had bought, and slinking off to work at night. They rarely spoke, if ever, and most of his messages from her come through Darlene.

But he will be gone from home, soon, to take a stab at whatever New York City had to offer. Because even if it sucked, it had to be better than East Jersey – and his mother, as much as he loathes to leave Darlene alone. Magda senses this – though Elliot had been sure she didn’t care enough to notice.

“You’re grown, my son,” she says, when she finally approaches him. He’ll be gone in a month if things go the way he plans. “I wish you luck in the world.”

Elliot stops halfway through the sandwich he’s making. He laughs, dry and humorless, and loud – toeing the line into hysterical, crazy. He turns to her. “Don’t try it now.”

Magda pauses. “Excuse me?”

“Look at my arms,” he says, and he knows he’s yelling, can see the spit fleck from his screaming mouth. He doesn’t care, anymore. He hopes someone calls the cops. “Look at my _fucking_ arms, Mom!”

He holds them up for her, to see the scars she had made in all their repulsive, spotted glory. Call it punishment, or what have you, but she had ruined not only his skin – but his pride, his self-worth. He was a shell of a person, and he wasn’t even eighteen.

Magda never approaches him again, and when he leaves, he doesn’t say goodbye – though Darlene does get a squeeze and a mumbled warning to be good.

Elliot drags a fingernail hard across a particularly ugly looking scar, pushing up his hoodie sleeve to do it right. He doesn’t wince.

“She was just as bad,” he murmurs. “Worse, to Darlene. But she pretended.”

“To be a good mother?” Krista asks.

“To be a decent person,” he replies. “He was a monster – but she pretended not to be.”

“Elliot,” Darlene says, and it’s clear, just from her tone, this isn’t the time that she’ll leave him alone if he simply asks nicely. “C’n you braid my hair?”

And Mr. Robot should say no. He should be on high alert while Elliot is sleeping, and not get distracted enough to cater to the whims of his kid sister. But there’s nothing else to do, on the unseasonably warm night in October – and she was the only one in the house that he didn’t have to be wary of.

“Fine. C’mere.”

And it’s not particularly beautiful, because he’s working with stubby kid fingers and a whole lot of wild four-year-old mane – but he does it, and it actually stays in. Darlene smiles like he’s hung the moon, around the pacifier she’s too old for, though _they_ have yet to make her give it up.

“Thanks!” she says, and she rushes off in renewed preschooler glee. He watches her go, and then turns back to where Elliot is sleeping on the bed, curled in the fetal position with the covers pulled tight over his head. The crying had died down not long before, and he’d finally dropped into a restless sleep.

Mr. Robot doesn’t remember, but he can tell by the way the sheets smell – _cheap men's body wash, plastic computer parts, WD-40_ – that Edward had been there.

“Don’t touch me,” Elliot mumbles, wetly and half-hearted at best, when Robot pulls the covers from his face. He was snuffling for air but wouldn’t take it down himself – fear immediately comes off him in hot, palpable waves.

“Just me,” he says, and he knows Elliot understands the difference, even if he doesn’t understand Robot’s existence. Thank God he did, or it’d be an uphill battle every time.

And Robot didn’t know, exactly, why he had Edward’s face. He had stopped trying to figure it out, stopped poking at the open wound that was his self-image.

He could be mad at Elliot for doing this to him, for giving him the face of the man who hurts them repeatedly, day after day – but he can’t.

Elliot’s just a kid, and Robot won’t fully understand that they’re (technically) the same age for another decade or so. He feels responsible to not hurt the kid any farther, and maybe even get him through this.

They all knew Eddy was on his way out. Less than a year, and they would be free. He just had to get Elliot there, and things would maybe be better.

Elliot lets out a broken little sob, turning his face into the pillow, and Mr. Robot is again reminded that the poor kid is only eight years old. He sighs, removes his cap, and runs a hand through his thinning hair. He turns to go, to let Elliot rest, but a little hand shoots out from the blankets and grabs his wrist.

“Don’t leave me,” Elliot cries, his eyes still shut. His voice is soft, desperate. Desperate not to be left, broken and shaking. Alone.

“Please.”

Mr. Robot doesn’t leave. He never would, if he could help it.

“Who are you?” The question isn’t malicious, but it catches Mr. Robot by surprise. He raises his head to Angela, in all her seventeen-year-old glory, thinking she was better than most everyone in her haughty teenage arrogance – except for Elliot. He refused to play the popularity game, and that meant something to her.

“Because you’re not him,” Angela sniffs, crossing her arms over the hot little tube top she had on. She loses her certainty, and Robot sees it – now would be the time to lie, to assure her it’s only Elliot, being weird and wacky again.

“No,” he says, and she finally takes a seat beside him. The bell will ring, soon, and Mr. Robot will have to try and remember where Elliot’s calc class is. “I’m not.”

“Then who _are_ you?” she repeats. “Why isn’t he here?”

_Because he had a panic attack over the anniversary of his abusive father’s death being next week, but that doesn’t really make for friendly lunchtime conversation._ Mr. Robot picks at the peas on Elliot’s tray with his plastic fork. Neither of them are hungry.

“I’m Mr. Robot,” he says, and waits for the realization to dawn on her face. It doesn’t, and that makes sense – Edward had worked for Evil Corp longer than he had Mr. Robot, and Angela had probably never even seen the Washington Township store when it was active.

“I’m part of him,” he tries to explain. “The part he needs right now.”

The bell rings, and he’s thankful for the timing. He stands, hikes Elliot’s comically large backpack over his shoulder. “I gotta get to class.”

“Your father died,” Magda’s voice sounds like it comes from underwater. “He was weak. I’m sorry for that.”

_Dad’s dead Dad’s dead Dad’s dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead –_

_Fuck. Dad's_ dead.

Elliot thought he’d feel relieved – happy, even, when the bucket finally got kicked. But all he feels is empty, lost. There’s no one left that’s willing to hold him.

Mr. Robot holds him, in the dark, after his tears have ended.

“We made it,” he says. And Elliot tries to believe.


End file.
